1.4 SCREENING: Gun Crazy

1.4 SCREENING: Gun Crazy


Pauline Kael once said Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun Crazy (1950) “has a fascinating crumminess,” which is an apt description for a film that has so much lurid material on its brain — guns, sex, robbery, murder, youthful corruption — but that never exploits it for more than it’s worth. It’s a film about two people brought together by their shared love of guns, and who stay together through a life of crime because they’re made for each other “like guns and ammunition,” in the words of the boyish Bart Tare (John Dall), and yet the film has a sensitive core that can’t be masked by its prurient surface. It’s a B-film with a heart of gold, even if that heart was probably stolen.

As a teenager, Bart Tare robs a hardware store to steal a gun and is sent to reform school. Though His friends and older sister testify that Bart would never kill a living creature after being emotionally scarred by shooting a young chick with his BB gun, the Judge still forces him to leave his friends and family. Bart returns  home after school and a stint in the Army and finds himself at a traveling carnival where he meets sharpshooter Annie “Laurie” Starr (Peggy Cummins). After defeating Laurie in a shooting contest, she gets him a job at the carnival, but it’s not long after that they both get fired after their mutual attraction infuriates the carnival boss (Berry Kroeger) who wants Laurie for himself. The two get married, but when they run out of money, they turn to a life of crime only for Bart to realize that his new wife has a predilection for violence that he doesn’t share.

Lewis and blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo establish a pulpy erotic tone in Gun Crazy that not only drives the action but also maintains a depraved milieu. The two have a lot of fun with the conveniently Freudian imagery of gun as phallus, but the emotional and physical intimacy between Bart and Laurie is curiously sparked by weaponry. The scene when Bart meets Laurie at the carnival as she’s demonstrating her sharpshooter skills is so sexually charged it might as well be foreplay. Dall projects a boyish charm that combines a “Golly!” sensibility with a devilish delight. Peggy Cummins conveys so much manic sexual energy as she robs banks and murders secretaries that it’s frighteningly compelling (though it peaks during the film’s famous single-take bank robbery which culminates in a close-up of her gleefully aroused face.) There’s a conflation of violence and sex in Gun Crazy that Arthur Penn would later employ in the similar and more successful Bonnie and Clyde seventeen years later, but Gun Crazy takes little pleasure in its violent eroticism and instead starkly depicts it as a way of life for those crazy kids. It brings them excitement, adventure, and even fleeting happiness, but it also directly contributes to their eventual downfall.

- Vikram Murthi, "CriticWire Classic of the Week Gun Crazy," IndieWire

Eddie Muller (the Tzar of Noir) gave a brief, detail packed introduction to the film on TCM's Noir Alley

YOUTUBE VIDEO
Noir Alley: Gun Crazy (1950) intro - Link Here




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